Alexander Collinson and Xinyue Ma

Alexander Collinson and Xinyue Ma are a London-based artist duo working with sound, moving image, and installation. Many of their projects start along the coast, where they collect materials and make field recordings. They use these materials in both physical and digital forms, shown together in the same space. In “Intertidal,” ceramics, video, and a slow soundscape are presented as one installation. Their work grows through time spent looking, listening, and staying with a place.

Intertidal - 2025

Q: You treat walking almost like a way of thinking. What changes for you when movement becomes part of making?

A: Walking is often where our work begins, around the city, along the coast, or just without direction. It is a way of giving attention to the world, of letting the body register what the eye alone might overlook. When you spend time outside, your senses open up, you start to notice textures, rhythms, and the quiet movements of people and things. The body becomes a tool for seeing, a kind of sensor that translates the environment into experience.

For us, walking isn’t only physical; it’s a way of thinking through motion. It reminds us that ideas grow slowly, through observation and chance encounters. The studio space feels very different, more controlled, more certain. Outside, the world interrupts you, and those interruptions often lead to new work.

Q: In “Intertidal,” sound, light, and rhythm feel inseparable. Where did that connection begin for you?

A: “Intertidal” began in the summer of 2024 with the idea of creating a ceramic sound sculpture that could hold the resonance of the sea. However, when XinYue started shaping the ceramic composition, she found an instant connection to her freediving experiences, reflecting on how the movement of the body underwater echoes the rhythm of waves, like the heartbeat of the ocean itself. From that moment, sound, movement, and the body became inseparable.

When we revisited the sculpture in 2025, it began to take on a new life of its own. Returning it to the sea deepened that connection. We wanted the waves to become part of the work, to activate its sound and let the rhythm of the ocean determine its voice. As we continued developing the piece, our thinking turned toward speculative futures and dark ecology. We imagined a sound that could feel both organic and futuristic, reflecting the motion of waves through long bowed strings and bright bell-like tones. 

The result carries a quiet sense of majesty, inviting thought and calm within the installation.

Light became an important part of the work through its digital nature, the screens would provide a bright glow, a signal to the audience, drawing them into the work, much like the sea on the beach. People are often attracted to run to it or dip their feet into the water. We wanted the rhythm of movement from the waves on the screen, combined with the tranquil sound and the glow from the screens, to trigger this feeling and sense of attraction.

For “Intertidal,” sound, light, and rhythm are inseparable because they all emerge from the same source, the movement of the sea itself. What began as a material experiment turned into a way of understanding how different senses meet in the act of perception.

Intertidal - 2025

Q: Your works move between the organic and the digital. What kind of tension or curiosity drives that mix?

A: For us it’s two things. Tension comes from everyday observation and our own lives. Living and working in the city, you start to become detached from nature or at least the natural environment beyond the city. 

Scrolling through photos and videos on social media is often the closest people get to outer city nature in months, maybe even years.

Taking this idea that we capture memories and moments of nature through digital devices, we try to look at our work as digital artefacts that can be shared through exhibitions in city spaces. Incorporating organic elements, found objects from the environment and bringing them into the gallery space alongside captured digital artefacts allows for a connection beyond that of a phone screen. It is a reminder that those environments exist and our work is a small slice of that.

Secondly, for us there is curiosity in the way we can enhance our understanding of the organic and natural world. We use digital media as a way of allowing an audience to see things in a different way. 

For example, in “Intertidal,” by breaking up multiple videos of waves hitting objects, it draws in the viewer’s attention to the motion and rhythm of the sea, highlighting a very small part of a much bigger picture. It is sometimes those smaller parts that allow us to learn and develop our understanding of the world around us. 

Just as we would look at a single artefact in a museum to understand a much larger period of time or event.

So for us, being able to use digital technologies to create artefacts of moments and time is something that drives the work we create. 

We never wish to replace the natural environment with digital technology, rather complement it and allow different audiences to experience nature in a new light.

Q: Collaboration seems essential to your process. How do you build trust inside that shared space?

A: Having the space and time to listen to one another is invaluable. Often as artists we have ideas but it’s hard to convey them or have the motivation to make those ideas happen. While working together, we support one another and help push our creativity further.

Trust has grown through time, by listening, learning, and giving each other the freedom to fail. It’s about creating a space where we can test ideas without hesitation and know they’ll be met with honesty and care. It’s also good to know your ideas are valued; that sense of respect makes everything else easier.

Our skill sets are quite different – XinYue has a background in theatre set design and sculptural installation, and Alexander has a background in sound design and narrative environments within a museum context. Because our media rarely overlap, we naturally give each other space. That contrast brings fresh perspectives to the work and, to be honest, probably helps us avoid a few arguments along the way. Difference becomes a kind of balance, each of us adds something the other might not have imagined. Over time, our aesthetic sensibilities have also aligned. Whether we’re talking, visiting exhibitions, or just stuck in traffic, new ideas tend to surface without effort.

Creating together feels intuitive – one of us starts a thought, the other builds on it, and before long we’re already deep in the process.

Intertidal - 2025

Q: The landscape keeps returning in your work, not just as a place but as a presence. What does it give back to you?

A: Landscape is never just scenery in the work we create. We want it to trigger discourse, create intrigue and connection. The landscape is never static, it is forever changing with the world around us, and as such it acts as an observer to our lives. While our technological advances grow and somewhat disconnect us even more from the natural world around, the landscape is always there and will always act as a presence that is familiar to us, through memories we make or activities we partake in.

For us, it gives back a sense of continuity. It grounds our practice and reminds us of the cycles that persist beyond our control. Much of our work touches on ecological questions and speculative futures, so the landscape should always feel present – something we want to honour and celebrate.

It also gives back to us on a personal level. XinYue’s experience as a freediver has shaped how we understand landscape as a living presence – something that goes beyond what is seen or pictured. Time spent away from the city and immersed in the ocean offers a different rhythm of being and gives a unique personal perspective as a creative. Approaching topics around the ocean through that first-hand experience offers another way of understanding our relationship with the environment. It reminds us that landscape is not confined to vision; it moves through the body, lingers in memory, and stays with you long after you surface.

Q: You often work with time as material. How does duration shape what a piece becomes?

A: Time in our work is not something we set or control. 

It develops through the conditions that shape the piece: the movement of water, the rhythm of light, the way sound travels through space. Duration appears as a result of these interactions rather than as a plan.

When working outdoors, we respond to what changes around us. Each moment alters the next: the tide shifts, the wind moves, the light fades. For “Intertidal,” each wave created its own interval of sound. The sea became our metronome. That unpredictability is what makes the piece feel alive – no moment repeats itself. Every site, every hour, holds a different rhythm, and it’s within that rhythm that the work finds its voice.

Time, in this sense, is both material and collaborator. It builds the work slowly, through repetition and change, until what remains is not a record of time passing, but a moment shaped by its presence.